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Apr. 29, 2019
3 Ways to Know Your Kids are Retaining Their Homeschool Lessons
You’re convinced that the state-mandated, fill-in-the-bubble tests are not terribly helpful. Instead, you're certain that sitting with your child one-on-one day in and day out gives you a much better gauge of his skill mastery. But you’ve got a niggling curiosity… are your kids really retaining what you’ve covered in your homeschool lessons?
It’s normal to wonder what information is sticking with your kids. As homeschool parents, testing reveals just as much about us as it does our students:
- Are we presenting information in the best ways?
- Are we offering the right environment for learning?
- Are we using the optimum level and right curriculum?
These can be important questions to ask. But is a written test the best way to assess what your kids remember and how you can do your job better? Usually, no.
Do Homeschoolers Test?
While tests, in all their incarnations, are a necessary evil in society, they aren’t usually required in homeschooling. Some states do require annual testing, and college aptitude tests in high school are generally unavoidable. But Sonlight’s History / Bible / Literature programs don’t actually come with written assessments. And your child can, with no ill effect, sail through four years of upper level Apologia Science without unwrapping the test booklet.
Assessing a child’s understanding of a topic in a creative way is often a more complete picture of what he or she actually knows. Plus it reveals insights about the effectiveness of your teaching methods. Most homeschooling parents have already realized that how something has always been done is often not the best way to do it.
Thinking Outside the Testing Box
So how does a homeschool parent test without, well… , testing?
Anything that digs into previously covered material can be used to assess retention. That conversation you and your 10-year-old had about Across Five Aprils while washing dishes at the sink? The one where he shared detail after detail about the Civil War? Put that down as an oral test because you now know how firm his grasp is on the history you presented.
Your first and third grader just cordoned off an area of the backyard and began a detailed reenactment of the action in Archaeologists Dig For Clues? Listen close, because you might get first-hand feedback on how well they understand the concept of uncovering ancient life—no true or false questions required!
Some other options that will get the job done painlessly:
1. Create a Review Game
Using any board game as a review is easy. Simply ask questions from the appendices of your Instructor’s Guide instead of rolling dice or pulling cards. Students must provide a correct answer before advancing their token. Nearly any game be used in this way! Make sure you play along as well, allowing your kids to make up their own questions to ask you!
2. Assign a Project
There are dozens of unique ways to know your kids are retaining their homeschool lessons without the confines of a test:
- making a display board of facts
- writing a comic book of a historical figure’s life
- pulling together images for a slide show
- presenting a scene from a novel
- creating a diorama of a scientific discovery
3. Let the Student Be the Teacher
Let kids demonstrate what they know:
- Have your child perform a science experiment while explaining what’s happening.
- Let your child make a short movie to illustrate the steps of a math formula
By flipping the script and letting the study be the teacher, they might even be able to pass on their newfound knowledge to their younger siblings— a decided bonus!
Adding these assessment tools to your toolbox will help you revisit areas that need more work and move on from topics that have been thoroughly covered. They’ll help you tweak your presentation skills as you work to become the homeschool teacher your kids need. You will learn to use your strengths and teaching style to maximum advantage. Best of all, these creative assessment methods will answer any questions you might have about how your kids are doing— without stress!
Tagged assessment, Homeschooling, mastery, measuring, Testing
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Apr. 26, 2019
It's Not All Rainbows and Butterflies: Homeschooling Is Hard
Homeschooling is not perfect. It also is not the answer to all the world’s problems. It’s not even the answer to all your family’s problems. So much of what you will see on social media paints a picture of a happy homeschooling family where all things are wonderful. But the truth is that it's work. Homeschooling is hard work.
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Apr. 24, 2019
Help! My High Schooler Hasn't Been Doing His Work!
You know you’re a little behind in checking those Creative Writing assignments, but every day, your high schooler has his Sonlight Student Guide out, and a book in his face. You’ve seen him at the computer, day in and day out, as you’ve hustled a load of clean laundry from the dryer to the coach while simultaneously listening to your middle schooler read aloud. You know he’s working.
And then, you finally scrape together a moment of free time and pull out your own Instructor’s Guide. Things seem off. You compare week numbers, backtracking to find individual assignments. You’re concerned. Your concern turns to surprise, your surprise turns to shock, and just like that, the gig is up! Your high schooler is severely off track, and he didn’t clue you in.
Who is Responsible for the Lapse?
Your first reaction is probably to drag your teenager to the table and read him the riot act. And yes, it’s true that the burden for completing the workload suggested in the Student Guide falls on the student. Sonlight has taken the work out of planning high school— so much so that it’s tempting to hand over that guide and assume your kid has all the tools he needs to succeed at his disposal.
But no curriculum works in a vacuum. You’re not meant to shelve your own Instructor Guide and check out.
Instead, you’re meant to find freedom in giving your high schooler some independence to develop the skills of self-led learning… while providing much-needed accountability and support. So if you suddenly find that six weeks’ worth of reading has gone undone, the burden of responsibility is shared evenly between teacher and student.
What’s Missing from the Assignments?
Once you’ve gotten past the relational issues of realizing what’s happened (and don’t be fooled, it does feel relational!), it’s time to begin assessing what’s missing. Let the personal sense of indignation go and take inventory.
- Check everything.
- Compile a master list of assignments.
- Correct any work that’s been sitting in your To Do folder as well, making sure that it’s appropriate and done to your standards.
You may find that your high schooler has dropped only writing assignments or only chemistry. More often, this kind of slip will show up in multiple areas, so be thorough.
When Did The Missing Work Start?
A full accounting of missing work will often point succinctly to where the breakdown began, unless your child has been attempting to catch up and has filled in some of the gaps on his own. It might also show where you stepped back and lost track of progress— which will help with your next step.
Why Did the Lapse Happen?
Things were fine until
- the new baby was born
- your child started a new part-time job
- a new skill was introduced
- your family started volunteering at the senior center three days a week
Having an idea of where the break occurred makes understanding what happened that much easier. There could be learning issues, emotional needs that have to be addressed, or comprehension difficulties at work. Of course, all of this is assuming that there is a verifiable underlying cause.
Let’s get real: sometimes, the work has gone undone because your teenager simply didn’t want to do it, or because he has been wasting time elsewhere. Maybe you have a real reason, too, or maybe you’re just stretched thin and didn’t feel like you needed to check in. At any rate, it’s time for a hard conversation about priorities, follow through, and time management.
How Are We Going to Catch Up with Homeschool?
List in hand, it’s now time to take what you’ve learned and move to the action phase. Depending on the length of time this has been going on and the cause, you get to decide what's appropriate:
- Natural consequences time—your teen will do all the work, and he's done when he's done.
- Grace time—you decide to forgive a portion of the work, abridge assignments, or change the format in which the work must be completed.
Being aware of your state’s requirement for grading and graduation is important here. Come up with a plan, and support your student on a daily basis for the best results. Remember to address all the issues at play, and not just give a checklist of work. This is a great opportunity to mentor your older child through time management, minimizing distractions, and creating an effective work environment if those things haven’t yet been done in your homeschool.
At the end of the process, hopefully you will have guided your child through something much more formative and character-building than a punitive smackdown. Remember that, no matter how grown up those 15-, 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds seem, they’re still works in progress. Using this lapse as part of their education and discipleship takes a potential failure and turns it into a valuable learning opportunity. Hold on to that, mom, and extend grace all around!
Tagged behind, curriculum, high school, scheduling, teens, Time Management
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Apr. 22, 2019
3 Ways to Keep Track of and Distinguish Characters in Read-Alouds
A story is more than words on a page. It’s the voices of the characters that keep readers engaged and propel the unfolding of the plot. Sonlight is a literature-rich program, and as such, there dozens of story lines and characters to keep track of in your Read-Alouds. Don’t be surprised if your child finds some books more difficult (or less interesting) than others because it is harder to keep track of the characters. If you and your children struggle to remember who is speaking or which character is which, here are three ways to keep track of and distinguish characters in your Read-Alouds.
1. Use a Different Voice for Each Character
- Using voices audibly differentiates among characters. Tightening the neck and jaw regions or lifting or lowering your neck or chin can create higher or lower pitched voices. Changing the shape of your mouth while reading changes your voice somewhat. Try speaking while smiling, grimacing, clenching teeth, or covering your teeth with your lips.
- Change the speed of your reading. Some characters are excitable and speak quickly. Others are more thoughtful or are slow talkers.
- Use accents. Think of a character from a TV show or movie that reminds you of how you think the Read-Aloud character might speak. Then mimic that accent. Don’t worry if your Dutch accent sounds more Russian, and your Russian accent comes out sounding rather French. Children won’t mind and will understand that you aren’t able to reproduce the accents authentically. Any change in accent will help them keep track of which character is talking.
- Pause to read ahead. You might need to take a break before reading dialogue to check who the character is and get your voice ready. That’s okay. Figure out who is speaking, then keep going with your voices.
- Save your ordinary voice for the main character and narrator. This trick makes it easier to keep track of what’s going on in the story. Almost all my main characters sound just like me and only the secondary characters sound like other people. If there’s more than one main character, usually the first one sounds like me.
- Use audiobooks to get ideas. Mimic the voices used in audiobooks!
- Use audiobooks as your substitute. Most of the time, I feel my children get a richer family experience by listening to me read, rather than an audiobook reader. But, there are some fantastic audiobook productions with a variety of voices that clearly portray a bevy of characters. For difficult books, having a professional reader can help your child to keep track of the different people in the story and deepen their understanding. Just make sure to listen along with your children, so you can discuss the deep concepts or the sad parts together.
Remember, the point isn’t to sound exactly the way the character ought to sound. The point is to make the listening easier on your reader. As long as the small changes in your voice help to achieve that goal, then that’s all you need.
2. Make a Chart of the Different Speakers
Instead of or in addition to using voices, a chart is a great reference tool. Use poster board, a chalkboard, a dry erase board, or even a piece of notebook paper to list the central characters. The act of making the chart is useful, and then you can refer to it regularly during Read-Aloud times.
For example, Walk the World’s Rim in History / Bible/ Literature D has a lot of Spanish characters who are very different from each other. After listing them all, we write a few words to describe each person. Here's an example of our list :
- Chakoh: Native American boy. Family starving. Eats lizards. Going to Mexico City to find his own medicine. (Main voice)
- Esteban: Esta Bien means he’s okay in Spanish. African slave. Tall and strong. Very smart. Friend to Chakoh. (Deep, strong, staccato)
- Cabeza De Vaca: Name means Head of Cow in Spanish. He’s also the head of expedition. (Less deep, very crisp, strong, authoritative)
- Dorantes: Name sounds like Doritos. Owner of Esteban. Willing to leave behind members of his team. (Whining, wheedling)
- Castillo: Name means castle in Spanish. Priest, belongs to the “castles” or large Catholic churches in Mexico. (Soft, calm, quiet)
3. Use Drawings
I find drawings, too, help my children visualize each character from a Read-Aloud.
- Draw a picture next to each name on a list. Drawings can show what the character might look like or things that remind you of their identity. For example, for Chakoh, we draw a boy or a medicine bag. For Cabeza de Vaca, we could draw a cow. For Castillo, we might draw a church that looks somewhat like a castle.
- Draw pictures of what is happening in the story during Read-Alouds time. Label the main characters to help keep them straight in the drawings. Don’t worry if the pictures look funny or aren’t entirely accurate. If they add things to the picture that aren’t in the story, they’re simply expanding the story in their mind, which shows they are internalizing the message. (A good thing!)
- Use coloring pages to go along with the stories. Besides coloring, draw or write in extra details to remember what’s going on.
- Make cartoons of the story. My children often draw cartoons with a funny punchline or that point out something funny that happened in the book. I am not a good illustrator, so when it is my turn to sketch our drawings, I rely on creative stick figures.
The main point of the drawings, or voices, or the charts isn’t to create an accurate description of every detail or point in the story. It is to help you and your children understand what is going on in the story, without getting confused. It’s okay to have fun with these tricks and make them inventive. We often draw alternate endings if we don't like the one in the book or make satirical cartoons that point out ways the thinking of the characters doesn’t make sense.
By using these tips, hopefully you can create an atmosphere where your children are able to keep track of what character is which so they can get lost in the story of their Read-Alouds.
Literature-based learning is an educational philosophy based on children's natural curiosity and love for stories. It uses outstanding books and delightful stories as the centerpiece for learning.
Tagged Homeschooling, read-alouds, reading, Teaching Tips, tips
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Apr. 17, 2019
4 Ways to Use the Power of Routine in Your Homeschool Day
Every single morning, I do the same thing. I do it almost without thinking as I am usually still half, if not fully, asleep. I go to the bathroom, change into the clothes I laid out the night before, brush my teeth, put on my makeup, and fix my hair for the day. Then I head to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee to drink while I pray and study my Bible. This has been my morning routine for years, and it just so happens it’s my favorite part of the day. There is something incredibly comfortable about routine and rhythm in life. It provides a familiarity that sets our minds and hearts at peace.
Being such a creature of routine, I always find it odd that I often forget how much routine means to my children. This is why I am caught off guard when my children fall apart on the rare Monday night that I don’t make spaghetti. For the last five years, Monday night is our family spaghetti night, generally followed by card games or a round of dominoes. For the last five years, my family has almost declared mutiny on me when I decide to use rotini pasta instead of spaghetti noodles or use alfredo sauce instead of my usual spaghetti sauce. You would think that I would learn, right?
With routine clearly being a powerful force, it seems that we should channel its power for use in our homeschool. So let’s look at a few ways that we can use the power of routine to maximize our homeschool.
1. Establish Morning/Evening Routines
Just like me, my children day need a clear signal to begin and a clear signal to end the day. Morning and evening routines give us natural bookends for our day that provide non-verbal cues and prepare our bodies for the day or for sleep. One of the things that I love so much about homeschooling is that it provides a perfect opportunity for a morning routine.
For seven years now, my family has been gathering in our common area for Couch Subjects™ first thing in the morning. It is such a wonderful way to begin the day. Bible reading, prayer, History, and Read-Alouds...I can’t think of a better start. After our Couch Subjects™, I don’t have to say a word. My kids know that is their cue to begin their schoolwork. In the evenings, we gather in the same place for evening prayer. From there, we go to bed.
When you begin a morning or evening routine, you’ll need to practice it often. Try holding a family meeting to introduce the idea of how mornings and evenings will go. Make a poster, listing the steps if needed and post it in a visible area. Then have your children do a dry run through the routine multiple times. It will seem silly to practice airbrushing your teeth, but it will probably end with plenty of giggles. The practice does wonders for making brain connections that assist in establishing the new routine. The first few weeks though, you’ll need to stay close during routine time to make sure they are completing their routine correctly. After a while, you’ll be able to just ask if they have done their routine, and eventually, the goal is to have them run through it completely independently with only the occasional refresher needed.
2. Introduce a New Habit by Attaching it to a Routine
If you need to add a new habit into your child’s routine, attach it to an already existing routine. For example, if you want your child to take out the trash every day, you can’t expect him or her to just notice when it gets full. Believe me, I have tried that, and it doesn’t work. I’ve actually tried seeing how long my kids will let it go before noticing. I highly discourage your trying this. It ended with us having a trash corner instead of a trash can!
Instead, attach the new habit to an existing routine. Have your child take the trash out after breakfast every day. Since you eat breakfast every day, it’s an already established routine. Simply remind him to grab the trash after he puts away his dishes, and before long, you will find that you don’t have to remind very much any more. Eating breakfast will give him the cue he needs to remember the trash.
You can do math drills at every stop light or silent reading every day after lunch. Put your daily medicine on your nightstand. There is no end to the applications here. Apply the power of routine.
3. Create Memories Through Routine
For the first several years of our homeschool journey, we created an interesting lunch routine. I found that by lunchtime, I had endured about as much togetherness as I could handle, and my introverted self needed a little break from the chatter. So, I decided that lunchtime would be perfect for a living room picnic. That began our daily routine of lunch and Lucy. We would spread out a blanket on the living room floor and watch an episode of our favorite TV show, I Love Lucy. We would eat and giggle and replenish ourselves for the remaining stretch of the day. We are now usually at our co-op during lunchtime, but to this day, my kids absolutely love having a living room picnic at lunchtime.
What routines can you establish to create memories? Maybe you can have tea time once a week where you pull out the fancy (or even not-so-fancy) dinnerware and have tea and pastries. I recently read a comment from a fellow Sonlight mom who uses Explode the Code. After doing their ETC work each day, she and her child make an explosion noise—so simple and yet so sweet and memorable. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated, and chances are that you are already implementing a memory-creating routine at some point in the day. That’s what homeschooling is all about!
4. Use Routine to Drive the Day
I am naturally a routine-oriented person. In fact, my husband has to force me to be spontaneous. So without really thinking much about it, I have implemented a routine for my kids throughout the day. They basically know what is expected of them next without me really saying much at all. This is because our routine drives us forward through our day. One thing naturally leads to another. I’ve even found that my children establish their own micro-routines that fit within our family routine. My oldest starts his work with reading, then he goes to language arts and then to math. My daughter does the opposite. She starts with math and likes to finish up with her reading time. Each of my children are different, but they all have their own personal routines that drive them through the day.
Think about your day, and consider the most logical flow for your family. It will almost definitely be at least somewhat different from mine, but here is our daily flow:
Morning Time/Couch Subjects→Independent Work→Break Time→Read-Aloud & Morning Snack→Independent Work→Lunchtime→Break Time→History & Science→Daily Work Check and Clean Up
You do not have to assign times to these sections of your day. Simply establish a logical flow that helps drive your children to the next part of the day. This natural flow will help your child get their work completed and feel comfortable through the predictable routine you have established for the family.
Routine is truly a powerful tool for homeschool moms. You probably don’t even realize how much you already use routine in your day. I would encourage you, however, to make sure that you are utilizing it to its fullest potential. The Bible says in Luke 16:10a, “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones.” Let’s teach our children to be faithful in the little things with the help of routines.
Tagged habits, homeschool tips, Homeschooling, routines, schedule, Teaching Tips
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Apr. 12, 2019
When You Are Disappointed: Homeschool Visions vs. Reality
You had a picture in your mind of what your homeschool day would look like. After eating a nutritious breakfast, your children would dutifully go to their books. The older children would work independently while you did phonics activities with the preschooler and your toddler played happily with the ocean-themed sensory box that you had prepared the evening before.
Mid-morning, everyone would come together for History / Bible / Literature time. Your oldest asks insightful questions as you finish each book. All children listen attentively and display clear signs that they have taken their learning to heart. Afterwards, the youngest play on their own while you check in with the older children's independent schoolwork. You give a spelling test and check math worksheets. While their answers aren't perfect, most scores are above 90% and show diligence.
Your oldest daughter entertains the younger children by leading a hands-on science experiment that was scheduled in her Instructor's Guide while you make lunch.
Then you eat a lunch where each person cleans their plate, and as nearly always happens, you're done with all official school tasks for the day by noon, leaving both you and the children free to spend the afternoon in creative pursuits, skill building, and the keeping of the home and yard.
Then Real-Life Homeschooling Begins
That's what you imagined homeschool would look like? Right?
- All of your kids would progress smoothly from one level to the next without going backward and forward.
- They would want to learn.
- They would listen attentively as you read stories.
- They would usually try their best.
- Sibling relationships would generally flourish.
But now you're homeschooling for real, and your four year old still can't identify her shapes after months of trying every activity you know. Or your fourteen year old asks you for help with a chemistry problem, but doesn't have the patience to wait while you try to figure out the answer, and stomps away, saying, "Never mind, it'll be faster if I figure it out myself." Or one child decides to take the easy way out with his math test and is found copying answers out of the answer key instead of solving the problems; problems that you know he knows how to solve!
Or you find yourself re-reading the scheduled Bible passage because all of the children looked blankly at you when you asked them comprehension questions. Another child ends up distracting herself from her tasks so much that she still has books not read and worksheets not done at bedtime, every single night. Your oldest complains that you never give her enough time for reading even though she averages an entire book a day. Your second child writes her name, very neatly, on her notebook, only it is spelled entirely backwards and every letter is upside down—and she can't tell the difference. The baby rips a page out of a school book when the six year old grabs it out of her hands. The eight year old made the six year old cry by taunting her about how she won't get any birthday presents. The birthday is six months away.
Your Homeschool Isn’t What You Imagined
Your homeschool probably doesn't look like the idyllic homeschool you once dreamed it would be. If you allow yourself to become disheartened by this, you might start to lose faith in your ability to educate your own children.
When they don't learn along the "normal" time frame, and when there are behavioral problems that interrupt everybody's day, you might start to think that someone else might be better cut out for the role of teacher.
Identify What’s Causing the Disappointment
Sometimes, when you feel disappointed by your homeschool, there are actual problems that do need to be addressed:
- The curriculum you’ve chosen really isn’t working for a particular child.
- The schedule you’ve picked doesn’t fit your current lifestyle.
- You’ve taken on too many outside activities and everyone in the family is getting stressed out.
Take the time to stop and consider, looking back at your homeschool experience so far. Decide whether the frustration you’re experiencing is due to consistent negative patterns that need to change. In that case, identify the underlying problems and seek solutions.
If your frustration is simply because your homeschool doesn’t look quite the way it did in your daydreams, you may need to accept that your expectations were unrealistic.
Shift Your Focus from the Disappointment
Instead of expecting perfection of yourself as a homeschool mom or of your children, expect moments of wonder and of light. Look for those!
Because even in the midst of some of the most imperfect of homeschool days, there are glimpses of the beauty that homeschool brings. And those glimpses—and our gratitude for them—are what keep us persisting when a child suddenly forgets how to add after having been able to do it for over a year. In fact, perhaps those exact moments of getting to come alongside and help our kids when they are really struggling to learn a concept...maybe those are actually among the greatest gifts that homeschooling offers.
That we, who know our own families the best, get to be right there to help them when a skill that comes easily to others doesn't make sense to them. That we get to be the first responders when they learn about the consequences of being lazy in learning. Perhaps, when we shift our perspective, we might even appreciate the gifts contained in the imperfections that ingrain themselves into our homeschool day.
